By Mata Press Service

 

Vancouver-based entrepreneur Altaf Nazerali has won a battle in his war against those he alleges smeared his name and continue to do so.

Last week, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the courts in this province have jurisdiction to try the defamation suit filed by Nazerali against a U.S. website that linked him to criminal and terrorist organizations.

Nazerali filed the suit against U.S. defendants Patrick Byrne and Mark Mitchell in October 2011over material published on Utah-based website deepcapture.com.

The duo argued that the Canadian courts can’t do anything about these writings because it has no jurisdiction on the matter and that publication did not occur in B.C. because there is no evidence anyone here read the alleged defamatory words.

Nazerali responded by filing affidavits from three prominent Vancouver businessmen who said they were "shocked," "amazed" and "dismayed" to read about Nazerali’s so-called connections to al-Qaida, the Taliban, the mafia as well as to stock manipulation and fraud.

There is "sufficient basis for the court to infer that the defamatory statements were published in . . . B.C., in that they were downloaded or read by someone in the province," Justice Carol Ross said in a ruling released Thursday.

This means the case can be tried here.

The Asian Pacific Post and its sister-paper The South Asian Post reported on the case last month.

Nazerali is a successful businessman, who promotes and invests in international companies, many of which are publicly traded, has also launched www.itcould

happentoyou.org to help people in similar predicaments.

“This is a web of lies.What happened to me could happen to anybody… It’s hard to understand this until it happens to you,” said Nazerali, whose work with high tech companies has helped law enforcement agencies throughout the world to save lives and fight crime, he said.

Last summer, Nazerali discovered that a number of articles were published on a website called deepcapture.com which contain what he asserts are terrible and utterly false claims about him.

These claims include preposterous and false allegations that he obtained his start as an arms dealer to the mujahedeen, that he has been a Pakistani intelligence asset, that he served as an important financial advisor to the Iranian regime, that he was an important figure in a massive criminal enterprise in the 1970s and 1980s, that he did business with such unsavoury organizations as the Italian mafia, the Russian mafia and Colombian drug cartels, and that he has controlled organizations that have manipulated U.S. markets from their base in the Netherlands.

The articles also link him to attempts to sell enriched uranium to Al-Qaeda, to Russian intelligence operators and arms dealers, to the godfather of the Kremlin, various mafia organizations in Italy and “an impressive number of securities traders who are also narco-traffickers”.

The author is Mark Mitchell, a self-styled investigative journalist who was unceremoniously dumped by the Columbia Journalism Review. He is backed by Patrick Byrne, a Utah-based Internet shopping tycoon and a stock conspiracy theorist.

Byrne on his blog wrote: “ In September 2011 Altaf Nazerali, who, while not a central character in the story, is mentioned numerous times, contacted us raising concerns that certain statements regarding him were inaccurate. Mark looked back at his reporting and, in cases where he believed it was warranted, modified the story: While we believe that facts should be reported, we are never above taking another  look at the story to make sure that we are as fair as possible. Good journalism stirs good debate.  And we are responsible journalists.

Mark sought further contact with Nazerali in early September but heard nothing further.

Then without any warning to Deep Capture, Nazerali attempted to silence Deep Capture.”